30 Great Places to Work 2018

StepStone: Finding great people for great jobs

CIO Bulletin

December 2018

There is talent in abundance in today’s world. Rising literacy and quality of education all over the world has greatly improved the skill level too. But the challenge of making - the skilled aspirant and the employer - meet is still a challenge. There are a great number of job boards all over the world which try to bring these two together. But it requires a special bit of effort to bring together quality talent and companies together. StepStone is one such company that puts in that extra bit of effort so that the best talent in the industry gets to the best job available.

StepStone was founded in 1996 and grew to be one of the most successful online job board businesses today. The company has over 2200 enthusiastic people now who work extremely hard to deliver the best recruitment solutions for their customers and job seekers alike.

StepStone is a highly goal-oriented company where every single employee has his or her own area of expertise. And rightly so. To accurately and efficiently match job seekers they have to be goal-oriented as efforts do not count when your customers are unhappy. They work with their customers regularly to fill up the available positions as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Shared values

StepStone is a company that has grown rapidly and has a great global footprint. But with global operations, it is important to present a united front. And StepStone does this through their shared values.

Although its workforce is scattered all over the globe, working in different offices across geographical divisions they share the common goal of getting the best talents the best jobs in the industry. StepStone believes that it has a common vision, common mission and many common core strategies which explain why they work well together despite being present in so many countries. So, it’s safe to say that their culture unites them.

When asked about the work culture of the company, Christoph Schneppe of their International Sales Department said: “Teamwork is not just an empty phrase at StepStone - it's something we really believe in. We work hard together to meet our targets, but also know how to celebrate properly when we achieve them.”

Companies are only as great as the people behind them and to encourage great work the company is big on recruiting managers internally. Further, they give ample space for people to grow in their specific roles. Every employee is encouraged to innovate and voice their proposals to pave better paths towards reaching a goal.

The Network

StepStone co-founded The Network in 2002. The Network was created to be a global entity that could deliver global recruitment solutions. And it achieved exactly that. By the end of 2002, the alliance threw light on jobs from 18 countries. But the large share of these jobs were from Western Europe and Central Asia. In 2005, The Network went global, giving access to its European customers to the North Americans and vice-versa.

As of today it has brought over 50 of world’s leading job boards together and is offering recruiters their pick from the best talent pools from over 130 countries.

The best in the business!

StepStone is one of the best matchmakers in the industry. They operate over 10 top brands with 60 million visits. They post as many as 600,000 jobs every month online and around 60,000 companies use StepStone job boards to successfully recruit candidates with special talents. They live by a simple rule- to enable organizations in acquiring the most talented people in the industry. And they do it efficiently, year after year. This makes StepStone one of the best portals for job seekers and companies alike.

The StepStone Chief

Ralf Baumann, CEO of StepStone

Mr. Ralf Baumann is a pioneer who has experience in a few fields. From HR services and personnel administration software to sales and marketing enterprise software solutions, he has done it all.

Prior to joining StepStone, at PeopleSoft GmbH, he was the Sales, Marketing, and Alliances Director. He had held executive positions at various major software companies like Siebel Systems, SAP and SSA also.

In July 2002, he joined StepStone as the Managing Director of StepStone, Germany. He rose through the ranks to become the CEO of the company eventually.

“It’s my job to make StepStone a better company for the benefit of our users and customers, as well as our employees and shareholders.”

Milestones

1996- StepStone was founded.

2001- IPO at the Oslo Stock Exchange.

2002- Co-founded The Network.

2009- Acquisition of StepStone by Axel Springer AG, one of Europe’s leading multimedia corporations

2013- Takes over YOURCAREERGROUP. Saongroup joins StepStone.

2014- StepStone keeps expanding and acquires UK-based Jobsite.

"StepStone wants to be the job market of choice for customers and candidates.”

“Everything we do has one goal: To accurately match the best candidates with the best companies.”